Every-Day Religion

“Whether therefore j-e eat or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God.” — 1 Corinthians -k., 31.

WHEN the apostle, in this text, sets forth the idea that so common an action as the taking of food and drink is to be conducted to the glory of God, he proclaims the importance of religion in the ordinary affiiirs of our life. In all ages of the world there has been a tendency to set apart certain days, places, and occasions for worship, and to think those were the chief realms in which religion was to act. Now, holy days and holy places have their importance. They give opportunity for especial performance of Christian duty, and for regaling of the religious appetite; but they can not take the place of continuous exercise of faith and prayer. In other words, a man can not be so much of a Christian on Sunday that he can afford to be a worldling all the rest of the week. If a steamer put out for Southampton, and go one day in that direction, and the other six days go in other directions, how long before the steamer will get to Southampton? It will never get there. And though a man may seem to be voyaging heavenward during the holy Sabbath-day, if, during the following six clays of the week, lie is going toward the world, and toward the flesh, and toward the devil, he will never ride up into the peaceful harbor of heaven. You can not eat so much at the Sabbath banquet that you can afford religious abstinence the other six days. Heroism and princely behavior on great occasions are no apology for lack of right demeanor in circumstances insignificant and inconspicuous. The genuine Christian life is not spasmodic; does not go by fits and starts. It toils on through heat and cold, up steep mountains and along dangerous declivities, its eye on the everlasting hills crowned with the castles of the blessed.

I propose, this morning, to make a plea in behalf of what I shall call “every-day religion.”

In the first place, we want to bring the religion of Christ into our every-day conversation. When a dam breaks, and two or three villages in Massachusetts are overwhelmed, or an earthquake in South America swallows a whole city, then people begin to talk about the uncertainty of life, and they imagine that they are engaged in positively religious conversation. No. You may talk about these things, and have no grace of God at all in your heart. AVe ought every day to be talking religion. If there is any thing glad about it, any- thing beautiful about it, any thing important about it, we ought to be continuously discussing it. I have noticed that men, just in proportion as their Christian experience is shallow, talk about funerals, and grave-yards, and tombstones, and death-beds. The real, genuine Christian man talks chiefly about this life, and the great eternity beyond, and not so much about the insignificant pass between these two residences. And yet how few circles there are where the religion of Jesus

Christ is welcome. Go into a circle, even of Christian people, where they are full of joy and hilarity, and talk about Christ or heaven, and every thing is immediately silenced. As on a summer day, when the forests are full of life, chatter, and chirrup, and carol — a mighty chorus of bird-harmony, every tree-branch an orchestra — if a hawk appear in the sky, every voice stops, and the forests are still; just so I have seen a lively religious circle silenced on the appearance of any thing like religious conversation. No one had any thing to say, save, perhaps, some old patriarch in the corner of the room, who really thinks that something ought to be said, under the circumstances; so he puts one foot over the other, and heaves a long sigh, and says, “Oh yes that’s so, that’s so!”

My friends, the religion of Jesus Christ is something to talk about with a glad heart. It is brighter than the waters; it is more cheerful than the sunshine. Do not go around groaning about your religion, when you ought to be sino-ino; it or talking it in cheerful tones of voice. How often it is that we find men whose lives are utterly inconsistent, who attempt to talk religion, and always make a fiiilurc of it! My friends, we must live religion, or we can not talk it. If a man is cranky, and cross, and uncongenial, and hard in his dealings, and then begins to talk about Christ and heaven, every body is repelled by it. Yet I have sometimes heard such men say, in whining tones, “We are miserable sinners;” “The Lord bless you;” “The Lord have mercy on 3’ou;” their conversation interlarded with such expressions, which mean nothing but canting; and canting is the worst form of hypocrisy. If we have really felt the religion of Christ in our hearts, let us talk it, and talk it with an illuminated countenance, remembering tLat when two Christian people talk, God gives especial attention, and writes down what they say. Malachi iii,, 16: “Then they that feared the Lord spake often one to another; and the Lord hearkened and heard it, and a book of remembrance was written.”

Again I remark: we must bring the religion of Christ into our every-day emx)loyments. “Oh,” you say, “that is very well if a man handle large sums of money, or if he have an extensive traffic; it is very well for this importer of silks, for the bankers and shippers, for the Rothschilds and the Barings; but in my thread-and-needle store, in my trimming establishment, in the humble woi’k in life that I am called to, the sphere is too small for the action of such grand heavenly principles.” AVho told you so? Do you not know that God watches the faded leaf on the brook’s surface as certainly as he does the path of a blazing sun? And the moss that creeps up the side of the rock makes as much impression upon God’s mind as the waving tops of Oregon pine and Lebanon cedar; and the alder, crackling under the cow’s hoof, sounds as loud in God’s ear as the snap of a world’s conflagration. When you have any thing to do in life, however humble it may seem to be, God is always there to help you to do it. If your work is that of a fisherman, then God will help you, as he helped Simon when he dragged Gennesaret. If your work is drawing water, then he will help you, as when he talked at the well-curb to the Samaritan woman. If j-ou are engaged in the custom-house, he will lead 3’ou, as he led Matthew sitting at the receipt of customs. A religion that is not good in one place is not worth any thing in another place. The man who has only a day’s wages in his pocket as certainly needs the guidance of religion, as he who rattles the keys of a bank, and could abscond with a hundred thousand hard dollars.

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